Americans Sometimes Blinded By Our Ideals

As a first-generation immigrant moving to suburban Connecticut from China, my Americanization was an exhilarating process. America was a country of freedom and possibility, where individual rights reigned and the bathroom at McDonalds rivaled that of luxury hotels in Lanzhou. I now enjoy New Orleans jazz, voting rights and $1 pizza paired with $2 beer just as much as the next guy (or, more accurately, petite Asian girl).

Yet by straddling two cultures, I also witnessed the danger of applying American ideals universally, without considering the limitations and assumptions of our vantage point.

I had difficulty, for instance, stomaching the narrative strung together by Western media after the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370. Publications such as the Vancouver Sun and the Telegraph wrote about "orphaned parents," Chinese parents who lost their only child in the crash. As if losing an only child deserves more mourning than the inexplicable grief of losing one out of two, or 20. As if these orphaned parents deserved pity since an Orwellian Chinese government was presumably controlling their lives.

While discussing the one-child policy, Western sources express a knee-jerk reaction, denouncing it as morally wrong. This instinctive, negative consensus is what experts describe as a society employing its "moralization switch." When it's off, an issue is up for debate. When it's on, the subject matter becomes indisputable — attempts to shift established opinions suffer inevitable backlash. The moralization switch galvanizes us, as Americans, to defend civil liberties, individualism and the right to pristine barbecues on the Fourth of July — all decidedly noble stances. Yet the moralization switch is also what causes us, as Americans, to righteously exalt our liberal democracy and attempt to impose it universally. When the switch is on, rationality is off. Compromise and objectivity are sacrificed for the satisfaction of being right.

Let's put the switch aside. Here are the facts about the one-child policy. In the second-half of the 20th century, the world saw its largest population increase. Population growth in China proved disastrous; massive famines in 1962 claimed 30 million lives. My grandmother described a country terrified about food shortages and industrial cities choked by poverty, congestion and pollution. Framed in this context, the adoption of a national population policy seems less absurd or unwarranted.

By bringing population policy under national jurisdiction, China began to tackle its sustainable development. As a country housing one-fifth of the world population, we should probably be glad that China is taking substantial (albeit imperfect) steps to prevent overpopulation. Even if every American put up solar panels and shelled out for a Tesla, the positive effects on environmental conservation would be dwarfed by the 250 million births prevented by the one-child policy. If China had let unbounded growth occur, I'd bet that it would shoulder equal criticism for "irresponsible" lack of government action.

I am not defending the one-child policy as flawless. Forced abortions and sterilizations, though extremely rare, are atrocities that need to be prevented. Unintended social consequences like gender imbalance, a growing elderly population and negative sociological effects must be tackled. But there is a difference between trying to improve a policy after understanding its factual content and context vs. vilifying it from the get-go because of ethnocentric perspective.

Linking one genuine tragedy like Flight 370 with the one child-policy as thinly veiled criticism is shoddy journalism. But there's a serious lesson here: Other instances of insensitivity and misrepresentation may result in much more dire consequences. As citizens upholding the fundamental American values of acceptance and pragmatism, we should reflect on the sobering realities of Afghanistan and Iraq; evidently, the exportation of our ideals is far from universally successful. What does our "moralization switch" say to the Afghani-American who must constantly dealwith instinctive disparagement and misunderstanding? We don't have to retire the moralization switch entirely but perhaps we should look closely around the room before turning off the lights.

Cathy Guo, 18, of Madison, is a freshman studying economics and political science at Columbia University.

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